Florence 'Flo' Stueck (She/Her)

My areas of expertise are humans who self-identify under umbrellas of diversity. I believe all identities should be recognized and supported, including validating queer, asexual, fluid, and trans gender identities.

LQBTQ+ identities often have unique traumas. I specialize in culturally competent care to queer and transgender individuals – with a concentration of skills in the psychological well-being of bisexual identities. Publication: Habibi, S., & Stueck, F. (2018). Well-being: Bisexuality and mental and physical health. In J. Swan & S. Habibi (Eds), Bisexuality: Theories, research, and recommendations for the invisible sexuality (1st ed.). New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company.

A benefit of the CBT perspective is that it is a modality that fosters incorporating a diversity of empirically sound intervention strategies. The basic premise is that psychological distress is sustained by cognitive distortions. These maladaptive thoughts frequently maintain and boost emotional suffering and behavioral problems. To counter this unfavorable pattern of thinking I will collaborate with you on cognitive restructuring, or learning how to generate healthy beliefs.

Also called Person-Centered or Rogerian Therapy, I practice this approach and believe that it is vital to the therapy process to capability and deeply take in the subjective world of another person. This is called accurate empathy. Additionally, I am a believer in the works of Dr. Brené Brown, who teaches us that central to the development of insight and understanding is cultivating new beliefs such as feeling worthy of love and belonging.

Trauma often begins with an extremely upsetting event or events that overwhelms your internal resources and produces persistent psychological issues. As part of being a human in this world, especially recently during the global pandemic, we all have experienced trauma. I incorporate trauma-informed coping strategies as fundamental to your treatment.

I specialize in LGBTQIA+ identified folks. I believe that there are unique strengths and traumas in our population. I did my internship training at the LGBTQ Center in Long Beach. I have published and presented on bisexual identities: Habibi, S., & Stueck, F. (2018). Well-being: Bisexuality and mental and physical health. In J. Swan & S. Habibi (Eds), Bisexuality: Theories, research, and recommendations for the invisible sexuality (1st ed.). New York, NY: Springer

I believe all gender identities and gender expressions and pronouns deserve recognition and to be affirmed. Whether you identify as trans, non-binary, agender, gender fluid, androgyne, bigender, genderqueer, cis or something else, only you get to identify how you feel and I will be here to support you.